Africa World Airlines (AWA) has assured the general public that safety remains its “first priority” and will always operate to the “highest standards.”
AWA’s assurance follows an incident involving its aircraft and a bird during the landing phase of a flight at Kumasi Airport.
The flight hit the bird and as a precautionary measure an engineer was sent to assess the damage to the aircraft for advice.
“The engineer after his inspection and assessment did not find anything wrong with the aircraft but because the bird struck the aircraft on the engine cowling, he decided to run the engine to assure himself that there was no damage to the engine,” AWA said in a statement.
Below is the full statement on the incident:
On Sunday 11th March at 1.47pm one of our Embraer ERJ145 aircraft operating AW108 hit a bird during the landing phase of the flight at Kumasi Airport. Safety being our top priority and as a precautionary measure, we asked for an engineer to be sent on the next flight to assess the damage to the aircraft if any and declare the aircraft either fit or unfit to fly back to Accra.
The engineer after his inspection and assessment did not find anything wrong with the aircraft but because the bird struck the aircraft on the engine cowling, he decided to run the engine to assure himself that there was no damage to the engine. The engine under these circumstance has to be run through it whole power range from idle power to full power. Idle power is normally used to taxi the aircraft around the airport and full power is used for the take-off so passengers are not used to the sound of the engine, from outside of the aircraft, when it is at full power.
Some of the passengers became a bit concerned because they had not heard that sound from the engine at full power from outside the aircraft so were a bit skeptical to fly on that aircraft. The aircraft was declared serviceable and departed from Kumasi at 5,54pm and landed safely in Accra at 6.21pm.
We will want to assure the travelling public that safety being our first priority, we will always operate to the highest standards of safety well above the minimum requirements and our engineers will only release an aircraft that is completely serviceable to fly and our pilots will only fly an aircraft that is safe to fly. The safety of the travelling public is dear to our hearts and we will strive to maintain and improve the safety standards we have achieved.
Captain Samuel Thompson
Chief Operations Officer
Source: Ghana/Starrfmonline.com/103.5FM
